Content area
Full Text
ABSTRACT: With the growth of worldwide e-commerce, companies are increasingly targeting foreign online consumers. However, there is a dearth of evidence as to whether global consumers prefer to browse and buy from standardized global web sites or web sites adapted to their local cultures. This study provides evidence from five different countries as to whether global consumers prefer local web content or standardized web content. The study also measures how the degree of cultural adaptation on the web affects consumer perception of site effectiveness.
INTRODUCTION
It is expected that by 2005 the global online population will reach 1 billion consumers (www.nua.net/surveys/). The Internet technology enables companies to expand globally at a fast pace across diverse cultures, political systems, and economies (Zhao and Levary, 2002). eBay, Dell, Yahoo, Amazon, Landsend, and many other companies have set up local web sites to reach online consumers across the world. This recent surge in targeting global online consumers has re-ignited the old debate of whether to standardize or localize the communication content on the web (Ju-Pak, 1999; Simon, 2001).
The academic literature offers few studies that have looked into the issue of standardization or localization of the web communication content. Studies by Fink and Laupase (2000), Luna et al. (2002), Simon (2001) and Tsikriktsis (2002) provide some evidence of cross-cultural differences in perception of web site content, and support the use of localized web communication strategy. Recent studies by Kanso and Nelson (2002) and Singh et al. (2003) emphasize that values, appeals, symbols, and even themes in the communication content need to be targeted to local culture. On the other hand, studies by Hermans and Shanahan (2002), Sackmary and Scalia (1999) and Yang and Kang (2002) indicate that cultural factors do not impact consumer perception of web communication, and propose standardized approach to web communications. Even marketers are uncertain as to whether locally adapt their foreign web sites, and are rolling out standardized or machine translated web sites for different countries. For example, a study by Singh and Boughton (2002), found that out of 500 U.S. company web sites listed at Forbers.com, only 150 web sites had country-specific web pages (For example, web address ending in .nz for New Zealand, .jp for Japan, .it for Italy) and...